1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character reading apparatus having a magnetic ink character reader (MICR) and optical character reader (OCR), and a character processing method for reading and processing magnetic ink character text printed on a check or other processed medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Checks are often used for payment in restaurants, when shopping in stores, and for business transactions. Tracking information such as the bank number and checking account number, and the check amount, are printed in standardized magnetic ink characters in a specified area of the check, also called the MICR line, typically on the bottom line of the check. When a check payment is processed, this magnetic ink character information is read and used to query a specific organization, such as the bank or clearing house, for check verification. Reading magnetic ink characters is therefore essential to check payment processing.
Various efforts have therefore been made to assure that the magnetic ink characters are read accurately and to reduce the MICR reject rate. In addition to improving the character recognition technology used by the MICR reader, conventional efforts to improve the read rate have also combined an optical character reader with an MICR reader. Japanese unexamined Patent Appl. Pubs. S49-49545 and H7-182448, for example, teach using optical character recognition (OCR) to read magnetic ink characters that the MICR reader rejected, and thereby improve the overall read rate.
Characters that cannot be read magnetically are, however, unreadable for a reason, and optically reading these characters in order to improve the read rate of the check carries a significant risk of recognition error. The account number and other information printed with magnetic ink is basic to making a payment by check and requires accurate reading. More particularly, misreading the magnetic ink characters results in the subsequent payment process being based on erroneous data, which could create major post-processing problems. If read errors are a possibility, it is safer to simply process the check as unreadable. This means that if read errors are possible, some method of checking for misread characters is desirable. However, using the OCR reader to check all characters for read errors, is time-consuming and therefore a problem.
Another problem is caused by the background pattern often printed on checks. More specifically, reading magnetic ink characters with an OCR reader can take a long time to optically isolate the magnetic ink characters, resulting in processing delays.